


What's Better than Nothing

by dadmilkman



Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 17:24:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2237295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dadmilkman/pseuds/dadmilkman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you do when your purpose is taken from you?</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's Better than Nothing

**Author's Note:**

> second person, read from sei’s point of view
> 
> cross posted on tumblr at ( http://oniisei.tumblr.com/post/96334219039 )

You wake up and he’s gone, but the bed is warm and a light is shining from the opposite side of the room . A shuffling comes from the closet and he steps out wearing work clothes, looking as spiff as he was was going to a wedding. You’ve imagined him in wedding clothes, once, and the image comes back and makes you smile. He asks you what’s so funny, and then apologizes for waking you with a kiss. He says the day at the office will be long so you don’t need to wait up for him, but you probably will anyway. You don’t like going to be alone. He says there’s coffee in the pot, and breakfast in the oven, and the cat’s outside and the fish are fed, then asks if you need anything else before he leaves. You want to say something sappy, like telling him the only thing you need is him, or ask him to crawl back into bed with you because you weren’t done sleeping yet. But you shake your head and thank him, like every morning, and he gives you a short, sweet goodbye kiss and you watch him leave. Like every morning. You always try to fall back asleep but never can, now that you’re awake and the sun shining through the window makes it hard to close your eyes without being blinded behind your lids.

After tossing fitfully for a while, you stand and pull on some clothes, something lying on the floor from yesterday. It’s not yours, it’s snug on your shoulders and the sleeves are a centimeter too short. But it smells like him and you pull the collar up over you face to inhale the scent. Maybe he won’t notice his cologne on you later. Downstairs the coffee is staying hot and the food is staying warm and you’re staying in the house for the next few hours while you eat and find something to do to busy yourself until he gets home. A walk suits you after a while and you change into something more comfortable and take a short stroll before you’re out of breath sooner than you like and you head home. You tell yourself this is okay but you also tell yourself you won’t say anything to him about only being able to walk one block.

It’s lunch now, but you’re not really hungry, and if truth be told you never are. You don’t eat much, and that worries him. Most of the time he leaves meals for you in the fridge and this day proves no different, something small and simple with a few of your favorite things. You eat a few bites but put the rest back untouched, so at least he knows you noticed it and appreciate his concern, even if you don’t know why he worries so much.

In actuality, you should be the one worried about him. And you do, you worry about him more often than he probably knows or assumes. When he wakes up in cold sweats in the middle of the night from nightmares, and he’s jumpy the whole next day. When he comes home and falls asleep before even eating because he nearly works himself to death. When he gets those fits where he can’t calm down and he’s angry and you don’t know why and neither does he. And he throws things and yells and always feels bad about it but you always assure him it’s okay. When he asks if you still love him and you say yes, every single time, and you’ve stopped wondering why he keeps asking this and just answer him instead. You just say yes, because that’s what he needs to hear. When he asks if you’d ever leave him, and you tell him you wouldn’t go in a million years, and he says he wishes you could spend a million years together.

And when he’s feeling especially awful and all you can do is hold his head in your hands and touch his face and hair and say nice things and hope the bad feelings go away, and wish you were more useful in situations like this.

Sometimes, you feel really useless. Really really useless. And the feeling gathers in your chest and makes your breathing tight and you lie down for a while and it goes away, but not really, because it always comes back.

Sometimes you wish you weren’t so _useless_. And maybe every once in a while you’re good for an ear to listen, or a shoulder to cry on, but it’s been months since you’ve started wondering what your purpose is, or if you even have one.

He tells you that your purpose is to live, to live as much as you want to and now you have no holds barred against you and you can do whatever you want. But when you have no limitations where is the success that you’re rewarded with when you overcome an obstacle? When you have no valuable skills where is your importance? At least before, you were needed. And it was a shitty excuse for a life and it was hard and cruel but they needed you. They needed you, or at least parts of you, and you were necessary to something in the world. Now what are you? Pointless? What do you do with your life from now on? You’re only value were things you could do for other people, and now you can’t do anything except wear other people’s clothes and sleep more than you need to.

Time and time again the feeling comes back, that you can’t do anything. That you want to disappear. That you feel small and pointless and helpless. You couldn’t even escape on your own. You couldn’t even do that. You spent years sitting on your hands, day in and day out wishing you were free and now look at you. Free but lost. Where do you go from here? Most of your life has already been wasted and you feel like every minute you sit still doing nothing is adding to the overwhelming guilt of the universe being intrinsically pointless and your own life having no matter in the grand scheme of things and who would even miss you if you were gone? If you’d died back then like you wanted no one would have even known your name and your body would have fed the birds and flowers, and at least then maybe you’d be useful.

You don’t remember lying down but you’re on the floor and you’re shaking, you can’t stop shaking, your hands are shaking and your whole body is shaking and you’re scared. What are you even scared of? You don’t know, or at least you’re not sure but you definitely feel fear. Fear of the unknown, maybe. And it must have been a while that you’re on the floor because you look up and he’s above you, looking worried and his lips are moving but he’s not saying anything. No, that’s wrong, he is saying something you just can’t hear him. He picks you up but you can’t feel anything, your eyes are open but you’re not looking at anything. You stare into the distance and your vision blurs until it gets dark until you see nothing. Nothing. You are nothing.

You sleep and sleep until you wake up. Or you think you’re awake. At least you’re not sleeping anymore. And you don’t open your eyes because you know he’s going to be gone again and the bed will be warm and the light will be on and he’ll kiss you good bye and you’ll have the whole day to sit around and hope whatever it was that happened to you the day before doesn’t happen again.

But when you open your eyes he is there, he’s holding you close to him and he’s humming softly and the light is on and the bed is warm but he’s there. His arms are around you and his skin is warm against yours and his smell is all around you and you breath in deep, deep, deep, as deep as you can and when you exhale you pretend you just cleared your system of the nasty thoughts and exhaled all the smog clogging your lungs and making your brain funny. And you choke on your breath and you’re crying and he’s wiping your face and telling you it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. He says it over and over until it stops sounding like words and you’re okay. You’re okay. It’s okay.

And then he says he loves you, and he kisses your cheeks and he dries your face and runs his hands through your hair.

“I love you,” he says, “I need you.” And he whispers it against your skin like he hopes you’ll absorb his words into you. He says it again, and a third time just to make sure you were listening.

“I love you, too,” you say, and against his words your own sound weak and flimsy. But you, too, repeat them. Just to make sure he’s listening. You apologize but he brushes it away, saying you don’t have anything to apologize for. And you don’t think he's right but you believe him anyway, and then you apologize for apologizing and then he’s  laughing at your stubbornness and his laugh makes your chest tight all over again but this time its the good kind and you can’t make yourself laugh but you muster a smile. Your lips are quivering but you smile and then you hide your face in his chest and you just keep breathing in his smell.

You don’t really know if you feel any better but you don’t feel any worse, and at least he’s here. And everything is how it’s supposed to be. The bed is warm, and the light is on and you feel safe, at least, even if not happy. But that’s a start. It’s better than nothing.

  



End file.
